Champion News

The aproach of Spring in Champion.

After a soggy few days, to see the sun on Sunday was a joy and anyone who doubts that Spring has arrived must be watching television instead of being out in the beauty of it all.  Lawn mowers will be sputtering for the next few days trying to get caught up and some of the operators of those mowers will complain about the rampant growth when recently they were complaining about having to haul firewood and ashes.  Country living is sublime, most particularly in Champion.

Ms. Collins, of Champion-East (Vanzant) posted a nice picture of Duane and his turkey.  Then Ms. Rodgers sent a picture of her Jim and his turkey for Ruth to show Duane.  A couple of big tom turkeys bring smiles that don’t show up on the photographs because these guys are serious.  Surely, when everyone is looking away the hunters must grin from ear to ear.  There is plenty of reason to be happy.  Turkey season is putting groceries on the table and smiles on faces and feathers in caps.  This week is also staff appreciation week at Skyline School.  There are twenty-three people there every school day doing what does the very best good for our young people….education!  Thank you, every one of you.  Parents and others with a vested interest in the welfare of the children in our quality little rural school are welcome to show your appreciation with treats, supplies or kind words all week, and well, anytime.  Appreciation might boost their spirits.  Mrs. Ryan, teacher, and Mrs. Beth, bus driver, both have birthdays on May 1st.  Eighth grade student, Madison Shearer, will celebrate on the 2nd.  This will be her last year at Skyline and she will move on the next phase of her learning, another adventure.  Another adventurer partying on the 2nd is up in Springfield–Leo’s Grandmother.  She is the grandmother of a number of interesting and talented people and has a great Affinity Estate Sales business.  She knows her stuff.  Champions wish happy days to all you celebrants and to the people who know and love you.

“Take control of your future:  grow your own food, preserve your own food, trade and barter, cook from scratch, save your own seed, become self-sufficient,” says the homesteader on the internet.  It is a great idea and one that captures the desires and imaginations of many who are in the midst of learning how to match their expectations with their relative vigor.  It is exciting to see what some young folks over in Denlow are doing on the place that some people call the ‘pink’ house, though it has not been pink for a long time.  Passing by quickly, because the narrow winding road calls for vigilance, it looks like there is good gardening going on and that there are innovative chicken facilities.  To see an old place revitalized and thriving is an especially positive sight for people who are more accustomed to seeing the old places in decay.  Hopes are that the folks who live there now are well acquainted with the history of the place and the interesting lives and times of the people who grew up there and are now long gone.  “This old house was home and comfort as we fought the storms of life.”

Esther said not to swerve for a squirrel.  Nothing that you can do will affect the behavior of the squirrel.  What will happen will happen, and it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the squirrel.  Turtles are different.  You can see them from a distance.  They do not move in any kind of erratic way and you generally have time to make a small temporary adjustment in your trajectory to miss them.  They are moving around these days—mating and nesting.  The Missouri Department of Conservation says that there are seventeen kinds of turtles in the state and all but three of them are ‘protected.’  They are no threat to game fish and are beneficial scavengers.  They eat water plants, dead animals, snails, aquatic insects and crayfish.  Box turtles live on land and eat plants.  Our local species of box turtles live an average of 40 to 50 years.  Ethics would dictate that putting a protected box turtle on a fence post or in the crotch of tree in order to add to your turtle shell collection next winter might fall into the category of ‘unethical.’  Ethics are not tricky.  They are just the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior.  It is what your Mother meant when she gave you that stern look and said, “Behave.”

The set list for a Champion musician’s regular Saturday night gig at The Royal Oak in sister-city Edinburgh routinely includes covers of tunes made popular by Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and others.  One evening recently there was a group of appreciative patrons enjoying the music and the atmosphere for the first time in the iconic establishment.  It was only as they added to the tip jar and made their way out on to the street that the musicians learned that they were Russian.  They look just like everyone else.  It turns out that they are regular people like us.  They just speak a different language and have a different government that is doing no better job of representing its people than the current outfit on this side of the world.  The rhetoric and Machiavellian machinations of so called foreign policy rife with faux-conflict and obfuscation does not translate very well to regular people out here in every-day-land.  It would be easy to close our eyes and say, “Let somebody else worry about all this stuff that does not really have anything to do with us”.  That might be the reason we are in this pickle.  “Where are our pitch forks?”  These days we make our voices heard over the telephone:  The White House (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414, Governor Greitens (573) 751-3222, Roy Blunt (202) 224-5721, Claire McCaskill (202) 224-6154, Billy Long (202) 225-6536.  Jason Smith (202) 225-4404.

Gardeners are getting busy with spring planting and the ticks and chiggers are already out in force.  May Day is coming up so there will be parties going on all around the world.  The much anticipated Champion Spring Fling will happen on the 6th of May.  That is a Saturday.  Things will kick off about 11:00 and there will be good food, good music and the chance to reconnect with old friends and neighbors.  Harley and Barbara will miss it, but the internet had some good pictures of Barbara’s Illinois morels so their friends and family will not feel too bad about it.  Come down to the wide, wild, wooly banks of Auld Fox Creek that day for a good time.  Bring your lawn chairs.  Remember that Roger Miller song, “Walking in the sunshine, sing a little sunshine song.  Put a smile upon your face as if there’s nothing wrong.  Think about a good time you had a long time ago.  Think about, forget about your worries and your woes.  Walking in the sunshine, sing a little sunshine song” in Champion—Looking on The Bright Side!